Tax Talk

A letter in response to Jill Lepore’s article (November 26, 2012)

Jill Lepore, in her article on the history of Americans’ opposition to taxes, writes that Congress briefly taxed carriages and whiskey (“Tax Time,” November 26th). The latter tax was certainly unpopular, as the unsuccessful Whiskey Rebellion proved, in 1794. But the federal government has often relied on excise taxes on alcohol sales. According to the I.R.S., taxes on liquor, beer, and wine, as well as on tobacco, accounted for ninety per cent of its revenue between 1868 and 1913. One of the consequences of Prohibition was the loss of this revenue. Some of the wealthy—the Du Pont family and John D. Rockefeller, a lifelong teetotaller, among them—abandoned their earlier pro-Prohibition stance and supported its repeal, hoping that the resumption of tax revenues from alcohol would ease their income- and corporate-tax burden.

Frances Frankenburg

Bedford, Mass.

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